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1EdTech Consortium Announces Worldwide Assessment Interoperability Challenge

 

1EdTech Consortium Announces Worldwide Assessment Interoperability Challenge

Leading e-assessment suppliers agree to achieve conformance certification to 1EdTech APIP™ and QTI™ standards

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Lake Mary, USA – 1 October 2013 – The 1EdTech Consortium, the world’s leading educational technology standards setting collaborative, today announced the first ever e-assessment interoperability challenge featuring a commitment by several leading e-assessment suppliers to submit to conformance certification for the 1EdTech Accessible Portable Item Protocol™ (APIP™) and Question and Test Interoperability™ (QTI™) standards.


Entries to the challenge can come from any assessment product organization worldwide that can agree to the technical requirements and time schedule. Entries must be submitted no later than 28 February 2014. Medal winners will be selected by a panel consisting of end-users representing states and institutions.  Winners will be honored with Learning Impact Awards during the 2014 Learning Impact Institute 5-8 May in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA /learningimpact2014/. For details on how to enter the challenge, please have an authorized representative contact 1EdTech at assessmentchallenge@imsglobal.org or visit the challenge web page:  http://apip.imsglobal.org/challenge.html  For further information on QTI and APIP please visit: /apip/alliance.html


“The time has come for transition to electronic assessment to replace paper assessment for the very obvious benefits of reduced processing cost and reduced turnaround time,” said Dr. Rob Abel, Chief Executive of 1EdTech. “However, without interoperability of assessment items, tests, and data the benefits of moving to e-assessment are not as great as they could be because educational authorities become locked into proprietary formats and systems with higher operating costs in the long run. Thanks to leadership from the 1EdTech community the transition to e-assessment is now enabled with leading edge interoperability specifications and conformance certification to  ensure high levels of out-of-the-box interoperability.”


Statements of commitment to participate and support the e-assessment challenge:


"QTI is the fundament of the ONYX Testsuite and offers our customers the best support throughout the entire assessment workflow. The creation and maintenance of quality and well-proven content is the threshold to sustainable online tests and exams. The ONYX Testsuite focuses on free and interoperable assessment content for worldwide interoperability and re-use. To support the goals of 1EdTech and QTI, BPS is offering all ONYX modules for creation, conversion, delivery and reporting as open cloud services." - Yvonne Winkelmann, ONYX Product Manager, www.onyx-testsuite.com


“ETS supports open standards and has been a Contributing Member of the 1EdTech Consortium since 2000.   We were a key participant in the evolution of the 1EdTech Question & Test Interoperability (QTI) specification and the co-chair of the Accessible Portable Item Protocol (APIP) interoperability standard.  We are looking forward to competing in the APIP and QTI Conformance Certification Challenge with other vendors implementing APIP.  This important specification ensures that tests delivered on computers are accessible to the greatest number of students possible.” – Gary Driscoll, Senior Strategic Advisor, IT, ETS


“We are most excited to be a part of the 1EdTech QTI/APIP conformance certification challenge. We’d like to extend our support and have our digital assessment creation platform  Dictera® compliant with the QTI/APIP Certification norms.” - Srikanth Subramanian, Executive Vice President, Hurix Systems Pvt. Ltd.


"IBM is pleased to be participating in the historic 1EdTech APIP/QTI conformance challenge. Open technical standards have long been a hallmark of the most innovative industries and IBM believes that U.S. education will greatly benefit by leveraging open standards such as 1EdTech APIP/QTI." – Mike King, Vice President, Global Education Industry, IBM


“QTI and APIP represent important and timely advances as assessments of all types increasingly move online,” said Measured Progress President and CEO Martin Borg. “We’ve been ardent supporters of APIP from the beginning because we believe that the interoperability and accessibility of digital test content under the framework of an industry standard is good for students, good for educators and education agencies, and even good for content and system developers.”


"Pacific Metrics is committed to supporting the digital classroom for K–12 public education. This commitment is augmented by our belief that interoperability and portability of technology solutions, achieved through the Accessible Portable Item Protocol (APIP) standards, are critical to the success of technology solutions that support the digital classroom. Pacific Metrics has integrated the APIP standards into our ORCA Development environment, which was used to develop the web-based item authoring and item pool application for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. By attaining certification with 1EdTech we are reassuring our customers of Pacific Metrics’ commitment to the digital classroom and public education success." - Bob Guerin, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President, Pacific Metrics


"Through the use of common open standards, rather than proprietary schema or systems, the exchange of content and data among states, consortia and vendors is greatly facilitated. We are designing our next generation technology platforms to adhere to these standards and look forward to working with 1EdTech to certify them on the latest QTI and APIP specifications." - Wayne Ostler, Vice President, Digital Content & Measurement Systems, Pearson

About 1EdTech Consortium (1EdTech)
1EdTech is a nonprofit organization that advances technology that can affordably scale and improve educational participation and attainment. 1EdTech members are leading suppliers, institutions and government organizations that are enabling the future of education by collaborating on interoperability and adoption initiatives. 1EdTech sponsors Learning Impact: A global awards program & conference to recognize the impact of innovative technology on educational access, affordability, and quality. For more information visit imsglobal.org